Summary

The L40 accelerator is declared in pkg/recipe/criteria.go (CriteriaAcceleratorL40 = \"l40\") but has zero overlays in recipes/overlays/. A user running aicr recipe --accelerator l40 --service <any> cannot resolve a usable recipe.

Motivation / Context

Surfaced as an explicit "out of scope (track separately)" item in #969 — the validation phase coverage audit excluded L40 because no overlays exist to audit. Filing this so the gap has a dedicated tracker.

L40 / L40S are the workhorse inference cards (Ada Lovelace, 48GB) and are the preferred Cost/$TPS option on every hyperscaler for inference workloads. Their absence means AICR cannot serve the inference user segment without manual recipe authoring.

L40 / L40S cloud SKU availability

Note: This issue intentionally groups L40 and L40S because the criteria type is a single l40 enum value. If L40S vs L40 needs distinct overlays (different power/TDP, different NCCL profiles), file a separate issue to split the enum.

Suggested scope

Minimum viable for the first PR, extensions as follow-ups:

PR 1 (minimum): L40S on EKS (best-attested cloud):

• l40-eks-inference.yaml (primary use case)
• l40-eks-ubuntu-inference.yaml
• l40-eks-ubuntu-inference-dynamo.yaml and / or l40-eks-ubuntu-inference-nim.yaml (matches the H100 inference pattern)
• Per-accelerator constraint: Deployment.gpu-operator.version floor — L40 supported since v23.6; recommend >= v23.9.0 baseline
• No NCCL bandwidth threshold needed for single-node inference (the primary L40 use case); revisit if multi-node training overlays are added

PR 2+: Same patterns for GKE, OKE; AKS once a non-A10 SKU is current there.

Training overlays are deferred. L40 is rarely chosen for multi-node training; if a use case emerges, file a follow-up issue with the NCCL threshold spec.

Each PR should:

• Add the overlays
• Update recipes/registry.yaml if accelerator-specific component pins are needed
• Pass TestOverlayValidationPhaseFloor (deployment + conformance inherited from service-root via PR feat(recipe): deliver deployment-phase floor at per-accelerator wildcards #1001)
• Regenerate the BOM (make bom-docs) if any chart pin differs

Out of scope (file separately)

• L40 multi-node training overlays — defer until requested.
• L40 vs L40S enum split — if SKU-specific config diverges, file a separate pkg/recipe/criteria.go change.
• A10 / A40 / L4 — same Ada/Ampere inference-card class but distinct SKUs; not declared in criteria.go today.

Related

• Close deployment-phase validation coverage gaps for accelerator-bound GPU recipes #969 — validation phase coverage audit (L40 explicitly out-of-scope there)
• H100 inference overlay set: recipes/overlays/h100-*-inference*.yaml (reference pattern)
• RTX Pro 6000 LKE overlays: recipes/overlays/rtx-pro-6000-lke-*.yaml (single-node inference card pattern reference)